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Your repetition of this "I never accused you of being consistent" statement makes it look like you're trying to strawman my position without actually coming out and saying that. You're implying that I have internal attitudes that conflict with the ones I express, even though you aren't actually saying what those are. And, naturally, you set this up so that you can honestly claim that you never actually attributed any positions to me, and thus you never actually made the strawman fallacy (just like you did with su27). The problem is, it only works if you can fluster your opponent into giving you the openings you need, which is why you put loaded terms (such as misogynistic anti-abortionist) in your post without ever actually calling me one.

Quote from: Azdgari

Wait, "grow into..."? As opposed to a fertilized egg itself being one? Earlier you characterized the fertilized egg as a human being, yet here it's just the potential for one (as opposed to the other cells you mention).[1] Again, I never accused you of being consistent. Or are you making a distinction between a human being and a human person?[2]

Outside of legal terminology, of course, in which they are certainly different as well.

I expected you might try something like this, so you will note that I said it would grow into a human person, not a human being. The distinction is that a fertilized egg is a member of the species homo sapiens (what we call a human being), whereas it is not legally (or generally) recognized as a human person.

Quote from: Azdgari

Ahh the misogyny of the anti-abortionists, so pervasive. A woman isn't characterized as a person, but merely an environment.[3]

In case your protest this as reading too much into our wording, our choice of words can reveal a lot about our cultural biases. Here there's simply too much relevance for your poor choice of words to be random, given the position you're taking simultaneously.

Again, I expected you might try something like this. I spoke of environment as a general term (because fetuses can grow and develop outside of the womb, given the right conditions, such as an incubator or the equivalent; just gotta make sure that it gets the right nutrients and such). You took it as a specific term that referred to women, and implied that I might be a "misogynistic anti-abortionist", because I 'characterized' women as an environment. Never mind the fact that a woman is no more her womb than a man is his penis.

Maybe you'd better think about your own attitudes and why you would jump to a conclusion such as this. Because, right now, it honestly looks like you're just trying to find excuses to dismiss my arguments and paint me in such a way that you can ignore any future arguments from me on this subject. Hardly a way to conduct a reasonable discussion, which I was trying to have with you.

Quote from: Azdgari

She doesn't have to, you know, do anything - she's just the environment, a fertile background for the fetus. On its own, the fetus[4] will certainly not grow into a "human person".

"Fetus", of course, not "zygote" or "embryo" with you. You're referring to zygotes and embryos as well, but only use the term "fetus" because it's closer to "baby". Emotional appeals, just like the anti-choice lobby.

Your sarcasm here is both pointless and unnecessary, as you're directing it against the position you attributed to me just before, rather than the position I actually hold. Sure, to be precisely (and pedantically) correct, I should refer to each stage of development separately, so "fertilized egg, zygote, embryo and fetus". I do know the difference between them, but I saw no point in being such a pedant as to obsess over which formal term I should use. It's simpler just to say "fetus" or "embryo"; my choice of the term to use was not intended as an emotional appeal. Maybe you should consider what it means that you assumed it was one.

And of course a fetus can't survive on its own, without assistance. Any more than an infant could. We consider an infant to be a human being, though, despite its complete inability to survive unaided. Noting, of course, that this hasn't always been the case - there have been a lot of cultures which have abandoned unwanted infants, leaving them to die to exposure or predation.

Quote from: Azdgari

Once we view the mother as a human being, we're forced to acknowledge that she and her body play a very active role in turning that fetus into a human being. Just like she did when she got pregnant in the first place. Her body's work is not done after fertilization, Jaime.

I never said that it was. It was only your assumption that led you to believe that. You're implying that I somehow believed women were nothing more than an environment for a fetus to grow in, and without your efforts to illustrate this to me, I would have continued to believe that deep down. The thing is, though, that isn't how I think, and it never was. I can see a fetus as a human being without having to dismiss the mother's human-ness, and vice versa.

Quote from: Azdgari

I assume you mean "...but that we don't consider human beings/persons" here. "Qualitatively different" is a far cry from "human being" or "human person". My toothbrush is even more "qualitatively different" from those cells, yet we don't consider it to be a human being either. Potential is not actuality. Citing potential is an admission that what you're valuing does not exist yet.

Given your track record in this post, I think it's safe to say that you got this one wrong as well. You had to nitpick technicalities to change what I said into what you thought I might have meant (notably, using a toothbrush as an example of a "qualitative difference" from a cell that was not a human being; you seriously thought that was an effective counter?).

Quote from: Azdgari

I did. Then I smited you for it. You're typically a pretty honest chap, and if you realized it yourself, I'm sure you wouldn't have gone forward with it.

Unless, of course, it's been pointed out to you before...

Given the number of unwarranted assumptions you loaded your post down with, you will excuse me for not accepting that. But I don't think you did so intentionally. I think you got caught up in your immediate reaction to what you thought I was saying and never really stopped to consider if that reaction was warranted or justified. I've done that myself before (frankly, I did it a lot when I was younger). It's why I don't go with my first reaction anymore, because it's easier to take some extra time to think about it and make sure that I'm not the one with the error in judgment.

One of the reasons I'm pretty sure that you did this is because I stated that I supported legalized abortion and was against the anti-abortion movement in the very same post you 'smited' me for. I suppose that's where "I never accused you of being consistent" came from, since if you assume I have misogynistic anti-abortion attitudes deep down, they can't really be consistent with supporting legalized abortion. The only problem with this is that I don't have those attitudes at all (I've been pro-choice since I was a child; with a mother who was fervently pro-choice, and a father who clearly had no problems with that attitude, that was a foregone conclusion). I've spent a lot of time (literally years) thinking about this issue, and my posts here have reflected that thinking.

So, given that, I'm reasonably sure that there is no such glaring error as using the "human DNA canard" in my thinking. I could be wrong, of course, but given that the arguments you've used to support that accusation have been based on bad assumptions and implied strawmen, I don't think I am.